My Heart the Shape of a Begging Bowl
by meteoritecrater
Summary: This wasn't the way Rachel Berry expected her life to go.  Brittany/Rachel, Mike.


This wasn't the way things were supposed to be. Rachel Berry had been of the opinion that she had control over what happened in her life. She'd expected that if she got through high school, through the slogging and hard work and name calling and _hurt_, that she'd wake up on the other side of it and be able to say: I got out, I made more of myself, I took everything you gave me and it didn't keep me down - I _won_.

In her dreams Julliard had welcomed her with phrases like 'brightest talent of the generation.' Instead, she came up against not only people who had been given community theatre roles, but those who had been child actors on Broadway. Her glee club's nationals win didn't look as impressive on her application as she'd expected it to, when she was competing with someone who had sung their national anthem at the Olympics. In her dreams the hardest decision she'd had to make was whether to apply for music or theatre, because Julliard pushed you too hard towards greatness to spare the time for both. She'd expected to get into the school through her talent and hard work, instead of getting rejected from just her audition tape the first time she applied. The decision became whether she should fall back on her second choice offer, or if she should wait for next year's admission. But if she was going to do this, she was going to do it _right_. This time she'd be more prepared. No more Ohio-based classes; Julliard only allowed you to apply twice, so this was her last chance. This time she _had_ to make it count.

For the next year she lived in New York, fitting hotel lounge gigs in between vocal and drama work shops, and waitressing at an unglamorous restaurant by night. Her tips barely paid for her food, much less her apartment, and when she was wearing every one of her sweaters and sleeping on the couch because her heating never seemed to manage to permeate through to her bedroom, she missed her dads and home until the loneliness seemed to physically press her down against the musty floral cushions. The people she worked with were brusque and seemed to judge from the first glance that she wasn't worth getting to know, and the vicious edge to the passion of the people in her classes was almost worse.

When she received the letter telling her she'd been granted a live audition, she sat down on her floor and cried for an hour, the ink pressing its recognition of her talent into her cheek.

She worked with her vocal coach, she practiced with her accompanist daily, she gave up caffeine and drank only hot water and honey, she lost ten pounds and gained five back when her dads drove up for the audition, and just their concern was enough to make her almost sick with the need to come home.

When she came off the stage and her dads folded her into their arms, she couldn't speak for shaking, because everything rested on the moments she was replaying. When she was seated in the car, she said, "I was a quarter tone sharp in the thirty sixth bar, my phrasing was much better in the beginning when I practiced this morning, and…"

"You're being too hard on yourself," her dad interrupted her firmly. They took her out for the most filling meal she'd allowed herself in weeks, and she went over her audition until she'd torn it apart so many times she wasn't sure how much of it was real.

When she got the final rejection letter, she was too upset to cry. She sat on the floor, numb thoughts swirling in her brain, because this was it. This was everything. And everything was over.

She phoned her dads, and only started to cry after they did. It was such a _waste_, of time, of her own money, of all of the money her dads had put into thinking that she was talented enough to deserve it.

Rachel hadn't expected to end up here – in the same crappy apartment, with a new, but similar crappy waitressing job at a restaurant closer to her university. She'd expected Julliard. She had meant to graduate with a degree in music, but Columbia offered a major in both music and theatre. She hadn't expected to be able to do both of the things she loved, or for Columbia's teachers to be so bright. She hadn't expected—

"Rachel!"

Rachel nearly dropped her pen. After a year of no one – of missing Ohio so much that even Santana would have been a welcome face, of being called names like Jane and Emma because the restaurants she worked at had such high turn over rates that they didn't bother to print new name tags - Brittany and Mike's beaming smiles were almost too bright.

"Brittany, Mike, hi. What are you doing here?" Rachel fiddled with the corner of the pad she used to take orders, folding and unfolding the corner. Brittany and Mike. Mike and _Brittany_. Of all the things she'd been expecting when she woke up this morning, this wasn't even on the list. Especially when they were both so blatantly excited to see her – which, to be honest, grated, because she hadn't heard from either of them, even though she'd made sure to send Christmas cards to every member of glee club, with her and her dads in matching Christmas sweaters, and all of her contact details printed in meticulous gold calligraphy. All she received in return was a rather tasteless joke about a snow blower from Puck, a generic Christmas card from Mr. Schuester, and she was pretty sure Santana had added her home and email addresses to mailing lists because she kept getting spam addressed to Roachel Dingleberry. She decided to keep her grievances to herself, because it wouldn't really surprise her if Brittany couldn't figure out the postal service, and besides, it had been such a long time since she'd last been smiled at that all she really wanted to do was burst into tears and hug them.

"Soup for the sick one, he's been working too hard," Brittany said, smacking Mike lightly on the back of the head.

"It's not my fault you decided to sign me up for ballet, Britt; that woman is a demon."

"Every dancer needs to know ballet basics. It's like, a law," Brittany told Mike, nodding at him firmly.

"You two are… dancing? Here?"

"Yeah, they don't like you to declare dance your major until second year so we've been picking up whatever classes seemed easiest. But this year it's _on,_" Mike said. He held his fist out and Brittany knocked her knuckles against his without even looking.

"But we're both official university dance students now! What have you been up to?" Brittany asked. Her hair looked blonder, and her smile was so big Rachel felt small and pale next to it.

"I've been saving money. You know how it is, big city, lots of bills to pay, so what was it that you wanted to order today?" Rachel adjusted her apron, hiding the coffee stain behind the chequered table cloth and shifting to avoid Brittany's curious eyes and Mike's warm smile.

"Tomato soup, and a strawberry milkshake. A big one! And pancakes. With ice cream!"

Rachel couldn't help but flash a smile at that, because during Sue Sylvester's reign of dietary terror Brittany's stomach had often interrupted their music numbers. "Okay, that will be right with you." She nodded at them politely, putting her pen and pad in her apron and making sure her hair flicked behind her shoulders nicely as she turned.

Brittany's voice pulled her back. "Rachel! Don't leave. It's so nice to see someone I know!"

"Other than me, you mean," Mike said, with a deep cough. Brittany flinched, but poked him in the arm.

"You don't count, loser. C'mon, Rach, say you'll come hang with us after you're done?"

"I don't know…" They looked so _together_, sitting there, with one of Brittany's arms wrapped around Mike's shoulder. Rachel got the feeling she'd be a very unwelcome third wheel.

"Pleeeease." They said it in unison, drawing the word out. Brittany was baring all of her teeth in a cheesy grin, Mike's lower lip jutted out, and Rachel found herself unable to say no.

"Alright. I suppose that would be nice. Thank you for inviting me."

"Don't be silly!" Brittany said. She grabbed her phone out and put it in Rachel's hands. If Rachel had been expecting this reunion, she wouldn't have expected the heat that overtook her face as Brittany's fingertips brushed across the inside of her wrist. She wouldn't have expected the flush of memory: Brittany's hair flipping out behind her as she twirled down the hall, giddy with the success of starting a Britney Spears sex riot; Brittany's lips pressing warmth into hers with a murmured 'thanks for helping me practice'; the same bright smile Brittany was giving her now, and the words she pulled out at night and held close: 'you're pretty. You should remember it more often.'

Rachel's eyes were locked with Brittany's, and she couldn't remember her own phone number to type it in. Brittany's smile was slowly creeping further across her face, when abruptly, Mike sneezed.

At the same time, they both karate chopped the air, and Mike yelled "Kung flu!" so loudly that Rachel jumped, and her manager looked over with a glare as Mike and Brittany laughed. She keyed her number into Brittany's phone quickly, giggling at the face Mike made at her manager's back and giving them both a small wave before going back to work.

Hours later, lulled into the security of knowing that Mike and Brittany were together, Rachel was sitting far more comfortably than she had in months, on Brittany's lumpy couch, talking of glee and high school and what had happened to who, and what they were doing now. Her assumption came crashing down only after a bottle of wine and Mike's departure, when he casually mentioned going home to his girlfriend, and her thigh was already brushing against Brittany's. Even after Mike's abrupt departure, she wasn't ashamed of soaking in the attention greedily. Phone conversations with her dads just weren't enough, and Brittany's trick of listening to the meaning behind what she was saying as well as the words soothed over a year of nothing but acquaintances. (And was it just her, or had Brittany been unsubtly trying to get Mike to leave for the last hour or so?)

She didn't expect to wake up, after talking until the air outside brightened, with the weight of Brittany's head pressing her down against the cushions. She didn't expect the casual warmth that settled over her when Brittany's hand snaked across her shoulders, keeping her still before she'd thought to stand.

She definitely didn't expect that it would be Brittany – Brittany, who she'd always thought of as sweet but simple – to teach her things she didn't know she needed to learn. To listen, because Brittany would give all of herself before she asked for anything in return, and it meant that Rachel had to actively seek out her words instead of just tolerating them. To be patient, because Brittany's smile when she understood something difficult was worth the extra effort it took to explain. To love in little ways, because a smile from Brittany at the right time was as important as any grand gesture Rachel could think of.

She knew this wasn't what Brittany had expected either. Sometimes, she came home and saw Brittany on the phone, her smile stretched tight across her face. She knew that feeling, she _felt_ it, every time Finn was mentioned. She could see the lost hope and broken promises, but she bit her lip to hold back words, and Brittany would turn towards her, speaking into the phone with a soft voice that ached with trying to mend years of hurt, and Rachel would know that she didn't need to do anything but sit next to her and lock their fingers together.

She'd expected a sober graduation from Julliard, with her father's faces the only recognisable ones in the crowd before her, because it was lonely at the top and that was something she'd thought would always follow her. She hadn't expected the bricks of Columbia to feel like home, with the sun reflecting her own smile back at her from Mike's aviators, her best friends dancing around her and Brittany picking her up to twirl her in circles, putting her back on her feet just to set her head in circles again with a kiss. But that was okay, because when she thought about what she'd hoped for when she first sent off her applications – the details of Finn's proposal (the wedding, the honeymoon, the children… the grandchildren) graduating from Julliard with honours, the broadway offers (well, she would be lying if she said that part wouldn't still be welcome) – none of it compared to Brittany's smile, and the way her dads were watching her, as proud as though she'd achieved every one of her dreams.


End file.
